It's Monday, 7:40 in the morning, and Dana is on a ladder when her cell rings. A homeowner named Paul wants his old deck replaced before a family party in June. She likes the sound of it. She tells him she'll swing by Wednesday and writes his number on a lumber receipt.
The receipt goes on the dash of the truck.
On Wednesday she's there at lunch. Paul walks her around the yard, asks for wider stairs and wonders about composite boards. She measures, takes photos, and tells him he'll have a number by the end of the week. She means it.
On Thursday a crew member calls in sick. On Friday a materials order arrives short. By Sunday night she's at the kitchen table with four quotes to write, squinting at photos and trying to remember whether Paul settled on composite or cedar. She decides to call him in the morning, gets pulled onto a job instead, and the quote goes out Tuesday. That's eight days after he called.
Paul doesn't reply.
The job that never shows up anywhere
Nobody tells Dana she lost. Paul hired the company that sent him a number from their truck on Wednesday afternoon. They weren't better, and they may not have been cheaper. They were first, and he had a party coming.
Dana's records don't show a lost job. They show one more quote that never got an answer. When she looks back on a slow month she decides her prices are too high, so she shaves them. Now she's earning less on the jobs she wins, to fix a problem that had nothing to do with price.
Three small holes
Walk back through her week and there's no disaster in it.
- The call lived on a receipt. Nothing would ever remind her it was there.
- The quote waited for Sunday because it could only be written at a table, even though she had the measurements and her usual prices with her in the yard.
- Once it went out, nothing followed up. A short text two days later would have told her where she stood.
None of that takes a big system. A shared list and a price sheet on her phone would get her part of the way. What matters is that the call gets written down when it comes in, the quote can leave from the driveway, and the follow-up happens without her having to remember it.
In a busy season, a decent quote today can beat a better one next week.
The next spring
Her cell rings at 7:40 and she's on a ladder again. The caller's name, number and job go onto a list she can see from the truck. On Wednesday she walks the yard, enters the measurements, picks the boards with the homeowner standing next to her, and the quote reaches his phone before she's backed out of the driveway. Two days later a text goes out without her thinking about it.
She still loses jobs. But now people tell her no, and sometimes why, and she's stopped cutting her prices to fix a problem she never had.
